Earlier quoted context omitted.
October 16, 2000
What was so unreasonable about 1.5? That was my first python and it worked perfectly fine.
Old style classes. No way to subclass built-in types. No metaclasses.
Ask HN: Is Python dying?
291–300 of 369 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was so unreasonable about 1.5? That was my first python and it worked perfectly fine.
Old style classes. No way to subclass built-in types. No metaclasses.
Sure, but non of those things made it a bad language, or where really unreasonable things to have left out.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not meant to compete with Python as a glue language. The point is that you can start using Julia right now and be productive by calling other languages' libraries to fill in the holes.
The questions is why would I do that? Because Julia is new?
Well, what do you work on? Julia isn't for everyone.
I use it because it has quite good numerical primitives, and I can quickly make a slow, Python-like first pass at an algorithm, then profile and get C-like performance in the bottlenecks with minimal effort. And if I need a particular library, I can call Python's. Also: macros and multiple dispatch make a big expressiveness difference for my type of work.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
You will have to reach a little deeper for machine learning methods not supported by Julia. XGBoost has a Julia interface and you can google Julia SVM for myriad of alternatives. Packages like Mocha and MXNet are a few deep learning alternatives. PyCall is also an easy solution for interfacing with Python for things such as pyspark. It also has some of the most convenient to use parallel / distributed computing tools…
If Julia just want to replace Python as the glue interface, it seems to have no chance winning...What it can do, as a glue layer, that Python cannot do?
It's much easier and lower-overhead to call into C, Fortran, and soon even C++, from Julia than it is from Python. If there's a library in Python but not yet in Julia, it's really easy to call into Python from Julia.
What you can do in Julia that you can't do in Python is write high-performance library code in the high level language. If you need to write custom code that isn't just using stock numpy or scipy algorithms right out of the box, and needs to use custom data structures and user-defined types, Julia is a fantastic choice. You can try with Cython or Numba or PyPy, but you're either working with a limited subset of the language, or forgoing compatibility with most of the libraries that people use Python for.
Julia feels like writing Python but does not allow some of the semantically impossible-to-optimize behaviors that you can find in Python, and has a type system that you can use to your advantage in designing optimized data structures for the problem at hand.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Haskell - Type classes support polymorphism and extensibility. While most of your examples are valid, I don't think Haskell is remotely object oriented. Type classes are not classes.
Any Haskell coder knows that. Quoting myself > ... support polymorphism and extensibility. OOP isn't only the C# and Java view of the world.
Polymorphism and extensibility are features of OOP, but Haskell implements them in a rather different way to most OOP languages.
I realise people disagree about what exactly should be considered OOP, but personally I think not including inheritance in the definition broadens the term beyond usefulness.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#296That may be a view through the distorted HN lenses. Spend some time on Lambda the Ultimate and you'll think imperative programming is dying. Go is new and has lots of issues. It's annoying on many fronts and badly needs improvements in packaging area. It's good for some things and worse for others. JS is for frontend, because it's the only supported language. (although there are python-to-js compilers available if yo…
My prediction is that one day some alternative Python interpreter (Stackless, or GIL-less, or which compiles ahead of time to machine code, or something like that) will go from being merely an interesting concept to a dominant runtime. Python is such an excellent language, and it only has a small handful of elements holding it back from being even better. I feel like eventually something has to give, and either there…
I really want ZiPy to take off, a fast Python 3.5 for the JVM would be lovely.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#297https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
"What language will replace python?"
"No."
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
>So maybe CloudShareBuzzr Inc. is using Python 2.7 internally, but they don't produce anything open source so it doesn't affect the rest of the ecosystem. It does matter because that means if you ever want to do it as a job, you HAVE to learn Python2 for that gig at CloudShareBuzzr. Paying your bills is always going to top using "the latest version" of anything. I'm not sure why people ignore or miss that point. Pyth…
I don't believe 2 and 3 are different enough that this theoretical company would turn someone away for being experienced in 3 rather than 2. Learn that print doesn't need parens anymore, a few renamed modules, that Python 2 str is mostly equivalent to Python 3 bytes and Python 2 unicode is mostly equivalent to Python 3 str and you're most of the way there.
It does make you more immediately employable. In sum I agree, but why is the inverse never true? You can learn and use 2, since that is the advantage for employment, then use 3 when you need to just as easily.
Let the tech live or die based on its actual merits (employment, technical etc), not trying to get more people onboard with propaganda. Considering the money is with 2, I think what you said backs it up even more. 3 will be easy to pickup when needed.
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Finance" is such a broad term with respect to IT - you'll find anything if you look hard enough. The following is based on my experience only - I'm sure there will be lots on here with different experiences: * I've seen more C++/Java/C# than anything else, with a large legacy base of COBOL/RPG (yes, GMI, we're looking at you...). * Industrial-grade quant libs (for risk, P&L, models that need regulatory approval) ten…
Im an economist who loves to program (especially in Python, but I'm not married to it), and I detest Excel. Where do I fit it?
marriage?
Re: Ask HN: Is Python dying?
#300The thing you ideally want from a language is the ability to benefit from an ecosystem adding functionality, teaching, open sourcing libraries etc. The Python ecosystem seems healthy to me. Interesting things are happening in the language around incremental typing and async. Python seems like the language of choice for binding C and C++ libraries. Python devs seems widely in demand. There is definitely a pullback in…
>There is definitely a pullback in using Python in performance critical conditions where Go seems to be making huge progress.
I work a regular gig, but also have a home business built on Django. I would do it as Dropbox does it- run the company on CPython2.7 and then CPU performance critical services on PyPy. GVR noted they have at least 1 thing running on PyPy.
I wouldn't personally bring another language into the stack unless it's absolutely unavoidable. When starting from scratch, I'd probably still go with Python.
...Or maybe Ruby. I'm starting to see the Ruby guys as being luckier than they think. You can run an entire Ruby shop and transition new services over to the Rubyesque Elixir. Which has significant benefits over anything the Python ecosystem has. I've never used Ruby but may give it another shot, due to Elixir's existence.